The Curator of Schlock #266 by Jeff Shuster

Twilight of the Cockroaches

Not to be confused with Grave of the Fireflies. 

The VHS cassette box for Twilight of the Cockroaches, a live action/anime hybrid movie, has a quote from Richard Harrington of The Washington Post. He says, “Could do for cockroaches what ‘The Secret of NIMH’ did for rats.” Now I know you kids have never heard of the Don Bluth animated masterpiece, The Secret of NIMH. It tanked at the box office leading Don Bluth to spend his energy making the arcade game Dragon’s Lair. You remember Dragon’s Lair, don’t ya? It was featured on that Stranger Things show that you guys love so much.

Anyway, we’re not here to talk about The Secret of NIMH. Tonight’s feature is 1987’s Twilight of the Cockroaches from director Hiroaki Yoshida, a movie that proves that cockroaches are people too. The movie centers around a pretty, young cockroach named Naomi (voiced by Rebecca Forstadt) who’s engaged to a boring, yet stable young cockroach named Ichiro (voiced by Stephen Apostolina). They live an idyllic life with their community of roaches in the apartment of a Japanese bachelor named Saito (Kaoru Kobayashi), who gave up killing roaches when his wife and daughter left him. Saito lets the roaches roam free in his apartment, letting them eat whatever they want.

What on Earth am I watching here? Twilight of the Cockroaches is an interesting production in that it combines live-action acting with animation not unlike Mary Poppinsor Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The technique is rather neat, featuring animated cockroaches against a backdrop of real life images such as Nike footwear and Heinz Ketchup bottles. While the movie does feature human characters in the form of Saito and his eventual girlfriend, Momoko (Setsuko Karasuma), the story focuses on the cockroaches, kind of like the latest Planet of the Apes movie. Except the cockroaches get their butt kicked in this movie.

A young woman named Momoko lives in the apartment across the way from Saito and she hates cockroaches. She buys all kind of sprays and traps, trying her damnedest to eliminate every cockroach in the vicinity. As a result, the tribe of cockroaches living on her property is a warrior tribe. One of these warriors is a handsome cockroach named Hans. He even has a cleft chin. After an excursion, he finds his way over to Saito’s apartment and Naomi falls for him instantly. Hans recovers and returns to his tribe, but Naomi follows him. They begin a torrid affair. Oh, along the way, Naomi runs into a talking turd. The talking turd is done with clay animation. What on Earth am I watching here?

Saito and Momoko also fall for each other. She moves into Saito’s apartment. so we know what that means. What follows is truly horrifying, a genocide of a race of creatures who just wanted to live peacefully with their human hosts. The warrior tribe of cockroaches comes to aid of the soft, yuppie tribe, but they get wiped out too. Naomi survives, pregnant with the next generation of cockroaches, immune to the poisons currently used by humans. This will force the humans to create deadlier poisons that will lead to even tougher cockroaches developing immunity to such poisons. Such is the fate of the cockroach as decreed by the god of the cockroaches. What on Earth am I watching here?

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #264 by Jeff Shuster

Lily C.A.T.

Not for kids. 

Streamline Pictures was instrumental in bringing state of the art Japanese animation to the United States back in the early 90s. It wasn’t marketed as anime like it is now. There was no existing audience for Japanese animation like there is today. A man named Carl Macek brought features stateside for distribution under his Streamline Pictures label. These features were often dubbed in English and released on videocassette. On cassette cases you’d often find a “NOT FOR KIDS” sticker fixed to the box featuring a caricature of a confused, freckle-faced young boy. These stickers always disturbed me, my mind conjuring images of young children being irrevocably scarred by witnessing animated sex and violence. NOT FOR KIDS stickers also elicited my feelings of guilt over not watching something more wholesome, but I couldn’t turn away from the exotic nature of these curiosities from Japan.

Which brings us to tonight’s feature, 1987’s Lily C.A.T. from director Hisayuki Toriumi. How does this film earn the “NOT FOR KIDS” label? Well, it’s basically an Alien knockoff with a little bit of John Carpenter’s The Thing thrown in. And we can forgive the movie for this since Alien basically ripped off It! The Terror From Beyond Space. The movie begins with members of the Sincam corporation getting ready for cryostasis aboard the starship, the Saides. Sincam employs people from all over the world. The crews mission is scope out some planet that’s twenty light years away, meaning the crew will be away from Earth for about forty years.

That’s a long time. Heck. If you do two missions, that will be eighty years. Think about all that could change. You’ll come back to Earth, ask for a cool, refreshing Coca-Cola Classic only to discover that New Coke has made a triumphant comeback. Talk about a waking nightmare.

Crewmembers have different reasons for wanting to leave the Earth for forty years. One blonde-haired jock type wants to use the money he earns from the trip to do some serious damage when he gets back while he’s still young enough to do some serious damage. Nancy Strauch (voiced by Julie Maddalena), the daughter of the President of the Sincam corporation, is taking the journey so she can get revenge on the best friend that stole her boyfriend. She’ll show up back on Earth all young and pretty when her friend is old and wrinkly. I don’t think Nancy thought this out. Captain Mike Hamilton (voiced by Mike Reynolds) keeps going on these trips because he’s too out of step with the times whenever he comes back to Earth.

There are also a couple of “time jumpers” mixed in with the regular crew. Time jumpers are fugitives that board starships hoping to hide out from the law for forty years. What else? There’s an alien bacterium absorbing members of the crew into a monstrous mass so that’s creepy. There’s also an evil robot sent by the corporation that’s disguised as a cat. So the crew of the Saides has a lot to worry about. Will they survive? I’m sure at least one of them will. That’s how these Alien movies tend to go.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #263 by Jeff Shuster

Alita: Battle Angel

I liked it. 

I’ve got nothing prepared this week. Digging up schlock from decades upon decades of film is hard work. I took a break and went to movies, went to check out the latest James Cameron milestone, Alita: Battle Angel. Not that James Cameron directed it, that duty fell to Robert Rodriguez, but whatever. I’ve liked his movies, too. He directed Planet Terror, a movie that spoofed that much-revered classic, Nightmare City. Without Planet Terror, there may not be a Museum of Schlock, so kudos.

But Alita: Battle Angel isn’t schlock, but perhaps it has schlock origins? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines schlock as “of low quality or value.” Certainly Japanese animation was at one point considered to be of low quality or value. Maybe it was because Japanese animation studios toiled under greater budgetary restraints than that of their American counterparts. Maybe it was because they didn’t hit the number of frames per second that their American counterparts strived for. Maybe it had something to do with anti-Japanese sentiment that was still rampant in the 1980s, a holdover from World War II. I used to hear the term “cheap Japanese cartoons” being tossed around when I was a kid, no doubt intended to discourage kids like me from watching Robotech or The Mysterious Cities of Gold. It didn’t work.

But being into Japanese animation was strange. Heck, being an adult who was into American cartoons was considered strange, but being into exotic cartoons from the Land of the Rising Sun? Forget about it. There were no fandoms back then except for Star Trek fans. No conventions or cosplay–except for Star Trek fans. I didn’t have Internet access until 1995. There was no connecting with people of similar weird interests. You got little exposure to things outside of the mainstream, having to rely on word of mouth and friends brave enough to fork over money for expensive VHS tapes featuring the latest in state of the art Japanese animation. One day, a friend loaned me a VHS tape titled Battle Angel Alita.

Battle Angel Alita was what was known as OVA in Japan. It’s an abbreviation for Original Video Animation. This was animation produced solely for those purchasing it on VHS or Laser Disc. These were usually limited series featuring animation of a higher quality that what was made for television. OVAs are notorious for being unfinished. In just two 30-minute episodes, Battle Angel Alita introduced me to a teenage girl cyborg fighting for justice and survival in a scrap-heap city lorded over by a city of elites that floated above them in the sky.

I think it was after Titanic got released that James Cameron said he was going to make a movie based on a Japanese comic book titled Alita. While I appreciated that Cameron was a fan of this underground comic, I never expected this project to get off the ground. Never in a million years did I expect an adaption of some VHS Japanese animation I borrowed from a friend in the mid 90s to be turned into a movie with a huge budget, state-of-the-art special effects, and an all star cast. And the movie is great, the best blockbuster of the year. Stop reading and go see it. I want a sequel.

And we will be covering anime features from the 1990s for the rest of this month. Until next week.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.